The present invention relates to optically active compounds which are starting materials of physiologically active substances, functional materials and the like, and to a process of producing the optically active compounds.
Optically active compounds and their esters are useful compounds as starting materials for physiologically active substances such as pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals, functional materials and the like, and as their intermediates. However, the compounds have optical isomers, and in many cases they do not sufficiently exhibit their useful characteristics unless the R- or S-compound is predominant.
For the above reasons, and in order to obtain an optically active substance, it is necessary to optically resolve a racemate (itself typically obtained by a synthetic chemical technique), to conduct an asymmetric synthesis, or to convert from an optically active starting material by a stereochemical synthetic method. In many cases, the process is troublesome and disadvantageous industrially.
Accordingly, it is desired to develop a technique for obtaining optically active compounds by an industrially advantageous method.